Wednesday, March 12, 2014

It's been a while since I asked this one but I thought I'd get a pulse on the current reading public.

What are you reading at the moment?

I'm reading the fantastic Hollow City by my friend Ransom Riggs. Like many other people I was so impressed by the conceit of the found photographs that give so much peculiar life to Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, yet what really brings these novels to life is Ransom's incredibly deft writing, which is on brilliant display in Hollow City.

I'm reading Alice Hoffman's latest, Museum of Extraordinary Things, which I'm finding compelling so far. I haven't read anything by her since At Risk, so some of her fans are expressing let down over this book compared to the others, but I like it well enough that I plan to go back and read more.

Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris. It came up on a Kindle Daily Deal recently for $1.99. I'd seen the movie but never read the book so decided to give it a try. I can't believe I never read this before! It's fantastic.

I'm reading 25 Ways to Beat Writer's Block by Paul Carroll; I'd heard about it on Twitter and downloaded it to my Kindle. It's pretty good so far; his suggestions really make sense. Other than that, for my dissertation I'm reading a bunch of scholarly books filled with academic jargon and hundreds of footnotes, sighhh...

I just started It's Complicated:the social lives of networked teens by danah boyd (lowercases hers). Very interesting breakdown of her recent study. I'm baffled by mainstream society's fear of social media/digital world/video games when it comes to kids. Fiction-wise, I just started Desolate Heart by Sidney Archer--so far a page-turner! I enjoy talking about books and seeing what others are reading. I'll be reading over the other comments for TBR ideas :)

The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker. Set in turn of the (last) century New York. A golem specially designed to appear to be a real woman finds herself in NY after her master dies. A jinni trapped in a bottle appears at a tinsmith who is a Syrian immigrant. Early days, yet, but I'm really thrilled by this.

Just finished "Helen and Troy's Epic Road Quest" by A. Lee Martinez. Fun book, in which a girl minotaur and the most perfect boy have to go on a quest (I also liked his "Gil's All Fright Diner"). Think of an American Tim Holt.

I just finished The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman, the last book in Rick Riordan's Kane Chronicles, The Serpent's Shadow, and Tamora Pierce's Provost's Dog series. Next I'm going to read Call the Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy and Hard Times by Jennifer Worth, Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong by James W. Loewen, Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone, and Broken Homes: A Rivers of London Novel by Ben Aaronovitch. After that...mmm. Maybe Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters.

The Power of Six--which I don't really like (it's the next after I am Number Four), but I keep reading because I read the first one, which I also didn't really like. Your book, How to Write a Novel (I'm taking my time on it, but it is awesome!). A really long story from H.P. Lovecraft because I was thinking I should read something by him. And my kid and I are reading Under Wildwood together (which I'm liking better than the first one).

"The Fatal Shore" by Robert Hughes. I'd heard about it for years but it became real to me after I read Patrick O'Brian's novels. They depict the world of 18th and early 19th century navigation so compellingly that I totally get what the early settlers of Australia went through. It's exhausting. It's also nearly 700 pages long, so I'm going to be tired but happy for a long, long time.

Switching between Erik Larson's Thunderstruck (fantastic so far, as is all his work), Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones and Regina Brett's Be the Miracle. All very different, but I like a few options depending on what mood I'm in and how much work my brain needs to be doing right about then.

I'm reading Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain. As an introvert who was convinced he was an extrovert for years, I find myself reading it and saying, "Oh, so that's why I felt that way..."

I'm reading "Shame," by Salman Rushdie. So far, he seems to be doing with Pakistan what Gabriel Garcia Marquez did, better, with Venezuela (The General in his Labrinth) and Colombia (Love in the Time of Cholera, 100 Years of Solitude).

Just finished a brisk march through "Julian Comstock" (Robert Charles Wilson) 'cause I'm a Peak Oil Nut. Now I can finish "Perdido Station (China Meiville) which languished half-read on my iPad while I read Comstock. Also reading "Life After Growth" (Tim Morgan) non-fic so I don't know if that counts! Too many books, not enough hours.

I just finished two books: _Wake_ by Anna Hope and _On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft_ by Stephen King. To give my brain a little break I'm reading a "fluff" book (_The First Affair by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus) before jumping into my next "serious" books (_How Fiction Works_ by James Woods and _The Mark of the Dragonfly_ by Jaleigh Johnson.)

I'm reading Jil Plummers, Amber Dust. I was hooked from the haunting first line - "Memory freezes the dead in immortal perfection while the living remain to be faulted." This story takes the reader to a place rich with intriguing characters and layered with suspense where the characters are not who they seem to be at first glance.

I'm reading 50 Big Ideas You Really Need to Know by Ben Dupre. It's an interesting overview / refresher on the big ideas we live in and think about all the time -- various "isms," big topics in religion, art and science, etc. It's not genius, but it's good.

I just finished A Dog's Purpose by Bruce Cameron, and am now into Life After Life, by Kate Atkinson. Hollow City is also on my list, as I LOVED Miss Peregrine's. Those photographs are eerily beautiful!

The Wine-Dark Sea, a collection of short stories by Robert Aickman. Classic horror along the lines of Alfred Hitchcock, or maybe a muted Twilight Zone, about traveling to foreign lands and not following the very prudent advice of the natives.

I am reading a historical mystery set in England and France in the 1930s: Jacqueline Winspear's Pardonable Lies. The protagonist Maisie Dobbs explores old secrets and torments in the aftermath of World War I. Wonderful characters!

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